DENVER, April 28, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – US Senator Ken Salazar, a staunch supporter of abortion, has labelled the Christian group Focus on the Family, “the antichrist of the world”. Salazar’s comments were made on KKTV television Tuesday in Colorado Springs where Focus on the Family has its central headquarters.
Speaking of Focus founder and president Dr. James Dobson, Salazar said, “Jim Dobson is not our president, and he’s not our senator. The right-wing part of the Republican Party and the so-called Christian conservative organizations like Focus on the Family have essentially tried to hijack the American government. I don’t think that’s what the American people want. That’s not what I want.”
Colorado Attorney General Salazar’s pro-abortion position was well known. During his election campaign Salazar said that he would “defend the constitutional right” to abortion and that he did not support “mandatory waiting periods, spousal consent, biased counseling requirements or other extreme limits on abortion rights.”
Last year Salazar was rebuked publicly by Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput. He was selected to receive an award from a Catholic lawyers group. However, when the archdiocese learned that the pro-abortion ‘Catholic’ was to receive an award they pulled the auxiliary bishop who was to say Mass for the group’s special award dinner, also telling them to move their ceremony from Church property. (see LifeSiteNews.com coverage)
Tom Minnery, vice president of government and public policy at Focus, explained Salazar’s actions as a response to a Focus campaign to have him live up to his campaign promises to stop filibustering President Bush’s judicial nominees. “He’s doing anything he can to change the subject from what’s at hand—and that is his unwillingness to allow mainstream federal judicial nominees to have a simple up-or-down vote (in the Senate),” Minnery said. “We wish that he would simply abide by his own campaign promise.”
Focus on the Family’s lobbying arm, Focus on the Family Action, targeted Salazar – and 20 other senators of both political parties – in an ad campaign designed to educate the public about the senators’ refusal to commit to ending the filibusters.